506 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



authorities are sorely tempted to abandon the attempt and put their in- 

 vestments in real estate — in buildings, plants, and inventories of trade 

 catalogues — to be pointed at with pride so long as one is blessed with an 

 easy conscience. Yet such abandonment means the loss of the soul — an 

 ancient but not negligible hazard. Commencement addresses may be 

 confidently counted upon to pay adequate tribute to the gains and glories 

 of a triumphant education, with an indulgence in fustian in inverse rela- 

 tion to insight. It is plain and crass folly to disregard the losses 

 and possibilities, which however intangible are by no means unreal. 

 The wisest men have always been influenced in their judgment by what 

 might have been; just as the future is shaped by those capable of con- 

 ceiving what may be. 



Reforms return to first principles to get a fair start, and are as 

 often called upon to retrace false steps as to project the course for the 

 future. A university is first and foremost an educational institution 

 ministered to by a company of scholars ; it engages many and diverse 

 activities, all contributory to its welfare. Yet no other test of value 

 is relevant than the educational one; no sacrifice in any measure of 

 educational to other interests can be justified; no domination or in- 

 trusion of any foreign spirit can be tolerated. These premises lead with 

 the directness of sound logic, with the constant reward that awaits 

 singleness of purpose, to the conclusion that the university interests 

 must be entrusted authoritatively to those expertly conversant with 

 their nature. The professorship must be made a position of honor 

 and authority. The evils that now cause anxiety but corroborate the 

 vital import of academic home-rule; they do not establish its validity; 

 it inheres in the nature of the influence which civilization has shaped 

 to guard the intellectual interests of the race. 



It is however important to view the situation in the concrete. By 

 way of illustration I shall survey a few significant consequences of the 

 system, which in turn are of a nature all compact. The directive forces 

 that determine the movement and activities of the academic life do not 

 validly or adequately express the real intentions, demands and ideals 

 thereof; this is the comprehensive and the woeful wrong. The rest is 

 but a bill of particulars, the recurring item in which is that through 

 such suppression, a usurping, distorting predominance is given to a 

 different and an unsuitable range of influences. First is the lack of 

 initiative, — a disqualification the more serious in a career that professes 

 to train for leadership; along with it is the absence of an authoritative 

 referendum. The democratic implication of the terms need not be 

 repudiated, if safeguarded by proper qualifications. The level at which 

 a reference to a composite expression of will is demanded in order to 

 secure the best result — and is not this in reality the aristocratic ideal 

 of government by the most competent ? — is reached whenever the quali- 

 fications of the referees are adjusted to the issues at stake. Such aris- 



